{"id":1095,"date":"2004-11-14T07:49:08","date_gmt":"2004-11-14T11:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=1095"},"modified":"2013-12-25T11:20:03","modified_gmt":"2013-12-25T15:20:03","slug":"kansas-city-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=1095","title":{"rendered":"Kansas City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seldom Seen<\/strong>: You like picture show?<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Johnny O'Hara<\/strong>: I can take it or leave\r\nit.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Seldom Seen<\/strong>: Well, I recommend you leave\r\nit.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Robert Altman is smarter about race and class than\r\nmost other directors in Hollywood, but since he's not seen as a\r\n\"political director,\" (unlike\r\nTim Robbins or\r\nJohn Sayles, for two examples)\r\nit's seldom mentioned in reviews of his work.\r\n

But watch the beginning of\r\nCookie's Fortune<\/em><\/a>, and see what tricks he\r\nplays on the audience, how he gently tweaks our prejudices.\r\nWillis Richland is drunk. We see him\r\nleaving a bar, and buying a bottle to take with him. He drops that\r\nbottle outside the bar when a patrol car cruises by, so he goes back\r\ninto the bar to steal another bottle to replace the broken one. On\r\nhis way home, we see him knock on the window of a van where an\r\nattractive white girl is sleeping, and we see her turn out the light,\r\npretending she isn't there. Then we see him climb clumsily into the\r\nkitchen window of a rich woman's house.<\/p>\r\n

Nothing big is made of it, but none of these events\r\nis what it might seem to be, and Altman is chiding us for the\r\nassumptions we're making because Willis is played by Charles S. Dutton, a\r\nhefty, middle-aged Black man.<\/p>\r\n

Altman tweaks bad screenwriting (here and in other\r\nof his recent movies, particularly the beginning of The Gingerbread Man<\/em>)\r\nthe same way David Cronenberg does in\r\neXistenZ<\/em><\/a>. But what he's really\r\ngetting at is not the screenwriters, but us. He's telling us that we need\r\nto think about his movies, not just experience them to be distracted, and, in\r\nexchange, he'll give us a movie that's worth thinking about.<\/p>\r\n

This intelligence, specifically about race and class, is\r\nespecially visible in Kansas City<\/em>, but it's really just a backdrop\r\nfor the movie's main concern, which is the movies in general, and how\r\ndangerous they can be when used as a guide for life.<\/p>\r\n

Seldom Seen<\/strong>: All that \"Amos & Andy.\" White people\r\njust sit around all day thinking up that shit. And then they believe<\/span>\r\nit.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Blondie O'Hara lives for the movies, in fact most\r\neverything she says, and how she says it, and even how she stands and\r\nwalks, comes right out of the movies. Jennifer Jason Leigh's\r\nperformance was criticized in some reviews for being annoying, but\r\nthat's exactly the point. It's always annoying when somebody goes\r\nthrough their life acting as though they're in a movie that only they\r\ncan see.<\/p>\r\n

Blondie's husband Johnny, similarly swayed by the\r\nmovies he's seen, has come up with a ridiculous plan to rob a successful\r\nBlack businessman, disguised in blackface. The businessman was on his\r\nway to lose his money gambling at the Hey Hey Club. Once Seldom\r\nSeen, who runs the club, finds out, his men snatch Johnny almost\r\nbefore he has the burnt cork washed off.<\/p>\r\n

When Johnny's wife Blondie learns what has happened,\r\nshe concocts a scheme to get her husband back by kidnapping Carolyn\r\nStilton, hoping to force her husband, a big-time political power\r\nbroker, to engineer Johnny's release.<\/p>\r\n

The miracle of Blondie's plan is that it works even\r\nas well as it does, but it's definitely the sort of plan that only a\r\ndedicated movie-goer would ever invent. Carolyn Stilton is a drug\r\naddict and spends the entire movie doped up on laudanum, but in the\r\nend she's far less drugged than Blondie. In fact, amusingly, at one\r\npoint they kill time in a movie theater showing a Jean Harlow film,\r\nand even when they step into the lobby to make a critical phone call,\r\nBlondie can barely tear herself away from the film, which she's seen\r\nseveral times before.<\/p>\r\n

The movie comes back again and again to\r\na back room in the Hey Hey Club, where Seldom Seen is talking\r\nto Johnny O'Hara, trying to figure out what\r\nto do with him (and seeing, in the\r\nprocess, if Johnny is capable of learning anything). Seldom Seen\r\nknows immediately that Johnny, like his wife, takes both movies and\r\nradio far too seriously, saying that Johnny, \"comes swinging in here\r\nlike Tarzan, into a sea of niggers.\"<\/p>\r\n

Seldom Seen<\/strong>: Come on, let's go hear some\r\nmusic.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

But there's a balance to the cautionary view of\r\nmovies, and that's the jazz. Altman assembled many of the best young\r\njazz musicians in the country and had them play at the Hey Hey Club.\r\nTheir music runs throughout the film, which takes place in a\r\nsingle night. It starts with the musicians wandering in and unpacking\r\ntheir instruments in the club in the late afternoon, playing\r\nidly, sitting out at the tables, greeting old friends, getting ready\r\nfor a long night.<\/p>\r\n

Then, as the evening progresses, the band plays for\r\nreal, including what develops into an incredible cutting contest\r\nbetween two tenor sax players.<\/p>\r\n

And finally, as the movie ends, the sky is light outside but\r\nit's still dark in the club, Seldom Seen is counting his money, and a\r\ncouple of bass players are playing a final quiet melody.<\/p>\r\n

Altman clearly loves jazz, and he knows that it\r\ntells a lot more truth, about everything, but especially about Black\r\npeople's lives in this country, than the movies ever have. And, it's\r\nclear that he knows clubs, from the casual time before the doors open\r\nand the audience comes in, to the incredible feeling when everything\r\nis going right, for both musicians and audience, to the way it can\r\nstill be the end of a dark, wonderful night in a club long after it's\r\nalready bustling morning outside.<\/p>\r\n

In fact, I've read that it was over a few drinks one\r\nnight that Altman got Belafonte to agree to play Seldom Seen, and I'd\r\nlike to think they were hearing some good jazz at the time. Apparently\r\nBelafonte was originally reluctant to take the part of a gangster, a\r\nmurderer and a drug user. He thought his audience wouldn't accept him\r\nin that type of role. Altman looked him in the eye and said,\r\n\"Belafonte, who started the rumor that you were an actor?\"<\/p>\r\n

And, of course, that was that. Like musicians in a\r\ncutting contest, some challenges you can't back down from.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\nKansas City<\/big>\r\n(1996)<\/span><\/strong>
\r\n\r\nDirected by Robert Altman
\r\n\r\nWritten by Robert Altman and Frank Barhydt
\r\n\r\n\r\nCast:<\/span><\/strong>\r\n
\r\nBlondie O'Hara : Jennifer Jason Leigh
\r\n\r\nCarolyn Stilton : Miranda Richardson
\r\n\r\nSeldom Seen : Harry Belafonte
\r\n\r\nHenry Stilton : Michael Murphy
\r\n\r\nJohnny O'Hara : Dermot Mulroney

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Seldom Seen: You like picture show? Johnny O’Hara: I can take it or leave it. Seldom Seen: Well, I recommend you leave it. Robert Altman is smarter about race and class than most other directors in Hollywood, but since he’s not seen as a “political director,” (unlike Tim Robbins or John Sayles, for two examples) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[36,33],"class_list":["post-1095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-reviews-2","tag-robert-altman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4631,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions\/4631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}